


Toy Soldiers

by blakefancier



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blakefancier/pseuds/blakefancier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Voice from the Past, Cally helps Blake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toy Soldiers

Cally was tired, but she had seen the look in Blake's eyes as he left medical and knew he needed her more than she needed sleep. It took her a better part of an hour, but she found him in a little room on one of the lower decks. He was sitting on the ground, legs pulled up to his chest, chin resting on his knees, staring out through one of the portholes. He was still in the white exercise clothes she had insisted he wear for the deprogramming.

He looked like a child in rumpled pajamas.

She sat next to him and resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. "Why aren't you resting? You'll be no use to us exhausted."

"I'll sleep when we get to Del 10. How's Jenna?" His voice was hoarse from screaming.

"She took my advice and she's resting." She wanted to touch him, to pull his head down to her shoulder and cradle him. Instead, she settled for more words. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Blake smiled and wrapped his arms around his legs. "What is there to say? I thought I was free but it turns out I was wrong."

"You're free now." Probably...but it was not the time to voice her doubts, her concerns. If there would ever be a time.

"No, I'm not. But that's not the worst of it." His hands tightened into fists and he stared at them for a moment. As she watched, he deliberately opened them. "Even if I wanted to talk about it, I couldn't."

"What do you mean?"

"There are no words to describe what I've been through. I've tried, but the words... " He looked at her now. His eyes were dark with pain. "Don't you think I've tried?"

She laid a hand on his shoulder. "You aren't the only one who's been hurt by the Federation. Why don't you talk to Avon...or Vila? He knows what it's like." She knew what it was like: pain and death and lying huddled in a ball, trying to sleep, trying not to scream at every groan and cry for help. Words--what words could convey the horror of all that? What was there for Blake but words? What was there for her, among these humans?

Blake shook his head and pressed his forehead to his knees. "What they did to Vila wasn't half of what they did to me." He was ashamed, she could hear it in his voice, feel it in the way his body shuddered: she could feel the unspoken words, *and it didn't take.*

She knew about shame too. "It's not your fault."

"Isn't it?" He made a raspy sound, almost a laugh. "How can I talk to them? How can I without... I watched as Bran and his followers were murdered. I hid as they were shot down. How can I tell them that?"

"What about Jenna?"

"No." His face turned red. "She's been through enough."

Jenna had been upset afterward, sobbing quietly that she couldn't bear any more of it. Cally had been surprised until she realized that it must have brought up memories of what had been done to her mother. No child should have to see that, but Jenna had (it was the only time Jenna had confided anything personal to her).

"She didn't mean it." Cally ran her hand down his arm but stopped when he shied away. "Then tell me the rest."

"I can't. If it had just been that, the physical, then I would have something concrete to explain. They shot me in the side, they broke my nose, they beat me until I begged them to stop, several of the guards raped me; that I could explain. That you could understand. What do you think they did to me? Can you understand what it means when I say they killed me, in my own mind, they killed me?" He shook his head and swallowed convulsively. "I hid. I hid and listened to them die."

Cally opened her mouth several times but no words would come. She thought of Saurian Major. She thought of her friends, her comrades, dying, gasping for breath, begging for her to do something. Dead in a week. How long had it taken her to dig their graves?

"I thought I was safe from them. I thought they could never touch me again. But I was wrong. They did, they did and now I know that I'll never be free of them." He touched his temple and frowned. "They went through my memories and took them from me. They were *mine* and they took them."

"Blake," she whispered but he ignored her.

"It was agony, torture, unbearable, awful, excruciating...and yet it was so much more painful than any word can describe. It was--" Blake made a frustrated sound deep in his throat: a growl, a sob.

She tightened her grip on his shoulder. What she wanted to do was press her fingers to his lips, to lessen his pain with her touch. Zelda used to do that for her when Cally was angry and hurting because no one understood her. She would stop Cally's words with warm fingers, then press their heads together, forehead to forehead, sending love and acceptance. Skin to skin, mind to mind.

"You all think I'm insane now, don't you? I almost wish I were. If I were insane I could conjure up a fantasy world for myself. A world of fancy, where no one could hurt me or mine again. But I'm sane, and they raped my mind and they killed my friends and family and they left me with nothing. Nothing," he hissed and turned his head away.

"But you have it back now, your memories, your mind. You have friends. You can make them pay. Blake..."

He turned to her, eyes wide with astonishment. "Is that what you think this is about, this rebellion? That this is revenge?" He laughed, then grew thoughtful.

"It would be understandable," she said. And hadn't it warmed her, thoughts of revenge, when the cold bitterness threatened to freeze her very soul?

"Yes, I suppose it would be." Blake licked his lips and sighed. "I felt myself slipping away. I was twenty-nine years old when they--they gutted me. The technician who did it, he told me to close my eyes and when I woke up; I'd be someone else. I still have a hard time falling asleep. I'm afraid I'll lose myself sometime in the night."

"Not your run of the mill insomnia, then?" She leaned against him, trying to share a bit of warmth, strength.

He laughed and his laughter was as sharp and painful as broken glass. "If I don't fight the Federation, it will be like dying. 'I could undo creation with my pain/ Soothe me with your darkness/ cool as the newly dead/ For you, my lost Love, are oblivion'."

"What?" She was startled.

"It's part of a poem. I don't remember who taught it to me."

"It's lovely."

"The lover is death."

Cally could feel her pulse pounding in her throat. "Is that what you think death is? Oblivion?"

"Maybe." He hesitated then asked in a rush, "Do you miss it Cally? Do you miss being able to communicate with others telepathically?"

She closed her eyes against the sudden tears. For a moment all she could think about was the connection of other minds, warm and bright, with hers. "Sometimes." All the time.

When she opened her eyes he was staring at her, staring into her. She turned away. When he finally spoke it was in a soft voice.

"When I was arrested the first time, they threw me into a holding cell with a bunch of other prisoners. There was a woman there, nothing was wrong with her, not that we could tell. She just stared off into space. She was fine alone but she couldn't abide anyone's touch, man or woman. She was given treatments because of her rebellious nature. They did that to her, broke her as if she were some child's toy. They did that to me too."

Alone and silent, she remembered the words she used to curse him. But he knew, he already knew.

She looked at him. His eyes were bright, too bright. And this time she gave in to her desires. She stroked his hair, pulled him close into her arms. For a moment he fought her, stiffened up and tried to move away, but she persisted. Suddenly he collapsed against her, pressed his face to her neck, held on. She wanted the moment to last forever.

It didn't.

"No," he said, pulling away. "I can't. I'm sorry, I can't." Then he was on his feet and out the door.

She followed him, but by the time she reached the corridor, he was already gone. When she saw him, two days later (he could be as elusive as Avon), he was as withdrawn as ever.

She wanted to go him again, but didn't-- he would not allow the slightest touch from anyone. Instead, she waited and hoped that eventually he would get tired of running and come to her.


End file.
